


Terms and Conditions

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pure Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 10:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A purely crackful story in which Not!Anthea can tell the future, Mycroft loves unnecessary paperwork, Douglas Adams helps you find your soulmate, and Adam is way out of his depth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terms and Conditions

**Author's Note:**

> Names chosen at random from Tumblr posts. So there you go.  
> Set sometime at the beginning of Series 1. Probably.

Adam follows the nameless man in the grey suit down an equally grey corridor. He could have sworn from the outside that this building was some kind of warehouse, but once inside he is reminded more of his father’s old office. The thought makes him uncomfortable. Not that he has been particularly comfortable, summoned from the station twenty minutes ago with no explanation besides a curt nod from DI Carter.

He is left in a white room with a circle of mismatched, mostly empty chairs. One holds a pretty blond woman who is making notes in a diary and fiddling with her hairpin. Across the room from her is an older woman, Adam guesses she’s Chinese, reading a book. There’s a young guy, about Adam’s age, actually, looking around nervously with his hands in the pockets of his grey cardigan. And one other man. A soldier. He’s relaxed, but wary, his feet planted deliberately on the ground. He’s in uniform, but his beret is held loosely between his hands. Adam’s never been good with identifying military branches, but he’s guessing Army. And gorgeous. But he’s trying not to notice that too much.

He takes a seat across the circle from the soldier, keeping his eyes on the floor. He hates these situations, when no one’s talking and there’s nothing to read. The soldier looks up and catches his eye, smiling slightly. Adam quirks up one corner of his mouth, then turns back to the door with what he hopes is a curious and expectant expression, not a shy, terrified one. 

The door opens, finally, and the grey-suited man ushers in two women. One hesitates before taking a seat; she has an ID badge around her neck and a stethoscope in one hand. Obviously a doctor, pulled away from work just as Adam was. He wishes he’d had time to take of the bloody vest, at least.

The other woman is sharply dressed, with a briefcase in one hand and a smartphone in the other. She doesn’t look at any of them, instead setting the briefcase on an empty chair and tapping away at the phone for another few moments. She slides it shut and then looks up, eyes widening for a second as though she’d forgotten they were there. The blonde woman coughs pointedly and closes her diary. The texting woman turns to her briefcase and addresses the room at large.

“Right. Thank you all for coming; I’m sure you’re very busy.”

“Actually, yeah. I had a patient when your man came and pulled me out of the clinic. Would you mind explaining?” The doctor is sitting up straight with an expression of polite distrust. Adam glances over at the soldier, who perked up when the woman in charge started speaking. He’s leaning slightly forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees. He looks serious but not frightened, waiting for a response.

“Don’t worry, it won’t be a minute.” She snaps open the briefcase and pulls out a stack of papers, handing them to the Chinese woman and gesturing to her to pass the stack around to the others. She then hands a pen to each of then and says, “If you could just fill this out, quick as you can, we’ll have Harold drive you back and you can continue your day.”

“Sorry,” the mousy young man in the cardigan asks. “What is it?”

“It’s a waiver,” she says, as though it’s the silliest question she’s ever heard. 

“For what?” the soldier asks evenly. “We’re not signing anything unless we know what it is. And who you are.”

“Corporal Lyons, is it? Yes?”

He straightens and his eyes narrow a fraction. “Yes.”

“Who I am is not relevant. I represent an … interested party.”

“Who’s Sherlock Holmes?” Adam asks, looking down at the form. It’s a simple half page full of legalese—a dialect Adam himself hasn’t fully learned. The odd name appears at the beginning of the statement, along with the words “physical, emotional, and psychological distress,” “sociopathic tendencies,” and “fully informed consent.”

“Sorry,” he continues. “But I don’t think we can sign off on ‘fully informed consent’ unless we’re, you know, fully informed about what we’re consenting to.” He chews on his bottom lip, glancing over at the soldier. Lyons, she said. Corporal Lyons. Lyons gives him a small smile and a nod, and Adam feels a warmth somewhere around his ribs.

The woman sighs. “This is as much as I can tell you. At some point within the next year, each of you will interact with a man named Sherlock Holmes. How, when, and where are, at this time, unspecified. Signing this waiver means that you do not hold the Holmes estate or its executors responsible for distress of any kind experienced during said interaction.”

There is a pause. The blonde woman furrows her brow. “How do you know that we—?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” the standing woman says with a tone that invites no discussion. “Trust me, you will sign these papers. There are absolutely no ill effects, no limitations on your personal freedoms, and no fine print. Make it easy on yourselves and sign it here and now. Truthfully, I have all day. I’d make some sort of threat, but …” she trails off with an almost disarming smile.

Lyons sits up, jaw tightening. He meets Adam’s eyes again and seems to ask a silent question. Adam’s not quite sure how they became a team all of a sudden, but he isn’t going to question it. He looks back over the paper and can’t find anything particularly objectionable, so he catches Lyons’s gaze again and shrugs one shoulder. 

The older woman sighs and signs the form with a flourish, leaving it on her vacated chair as she stomps out the door, muttering under her breath. The young man does the same and follows her out. The blonde woman looks at Adam and Lyons for a moment before biting her lip and signing. She stands and hands the paper to the woman in charge, who has her phone out and appears to be texting again.

“If there is anything underhanded going on here, I am warning you. I know an entire army of London’s finest solicitors.”

“How nice for you,” the woman smiles brightly at her, and she turns on her heel and marches out of the room. 

Adam is torn. On the one hand, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the statement. Some guy getting worked up about his reputation, trying to make an impression. On the other hand, Lyons isn’t signing. Adam doesn’t want to look like a pushover (and, to be honest, isn’t keen giving up his view), but he doesn’t want to seem like he can’t make his own decisions, either. Just as he’s mentally kicking himself for the third time today, Lyons speaks directly to him and jolts him back to earth.

“What do you think?”

“Seems—” he clears his throat and tries not to blush. “Seems harmless. Just like a ‘Terms and Conditions’ thing, you know. Like you see on iTunes or something …” he looks down at his lap.

“Mostly harmless. Okay, I can work with that,” Lyons clicks his pen and neatly signs, balancing the paper against his knee.

“Mostly harmless,” Adam repeats, grinning to himself. Lyons glancing up and grins back. He rises and makes for the door, throwing Adam into another internal conundrum. Does he sign now and leave directly behind the soldier? Or would that make him look like a stalker? But what’s the other options, sit here and pretend he can’t make up his mind, after he’s just said … ? 

Lyons interrupts his reverie again, turning in the doorway. “You coming, Detective Constable?”

Adam scrambles for his pen and scrawls his name half on the line, poking a whole in the paper. He hands it to the woman and pretends not to see her smirk.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?” he asks, reaching for small talk as they follow the winding corridors out into the sun.

“What day is it?” Lyons asks.

“Um. Thursday, I think.”

Lyons grins. “I never could—”

“Get the hang of Thursdays,” Adam joins in with a surprised laugh. Lyons smiles almost shyly and tucks his beret under his epaulette.

“Back to work?”

“I suppose so. You?”

Lyons considers for a moment. “I was just thinking … No one knows where we went, right? So no one knows how long we were supposed to be away.”

“Oh, I see,” Adam teases, shocked at his own daring. “A soldier with a disobedient streak.”

Lyons looks surprised, then shy, then stares him straight in the eye and says, “Fancy a drink, then?”

Adam almost forgets to verbalize his answer, brain racing, and so his “Yes, yeah, of course, yes,” tumbles out in a bit of a mess. He blushes and sticks his hands into his pockets, trying to look casual.

Lyons bites his lips and looks around a moment before saying, “God, this is backward. I’m Robert.”

“Adam,” Adam says, awkwardly holding out a hand. “I don’t know if you’re supposed to shake after you’ve already made a date.”

“Seems a bit weird, yeah,” Robert says, shaking it anyway. “What the hell. It’s been a weird day. Think we can get a cab from here?”

“Maybe if we head back toward that road there. I don’t really like the idea of being driven around by these people any more than we have.”

“I’m with you. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Robert turns towards the road, waiting for Adam to catch up and matching his slightly shorter stride. Adam bumps his arm—completely by accident, he’d swear it in court—but Robert doesn’t move away. Adam grins around at the grey warehouse, the cracked road littered with trash, the twisted and rusting chain-link fence. 

“So,” Robert says after a companionable silence. “Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes. Any ideas?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Not a one.” 

“Me neither,” Adam says, but finds that he doesn’t really care.


End file.
